Bell Aliant Internet speed tiers rise again

Bell Aliant Inc. has boosted its Internet speed tiers for the third time in a year.

The company said Tuesday that new customers on its FibreOP fibre-to-the-home network will be able to buy packages with upgraded speed tiers.

That means that a tier that was 20 megabits per second for downloads and 15 megabits per second for uploads is now a 50-30 split for downloads and uploads. The 50-30 tier now becomes 80-30; the 80-30 tier is now 175-30.

Video games, movies, television shows and apps can be downloaded in a matter of seconds.

Before Tuesday’s switch, the firm spent several days upgrading packages of its 100,000 FibreOP customers for free. The upgrades show the technology’s flexibility, said Andre LeBlanc, vice-president of residential markets.

“With no change to equipment or no disruption to them, we actually, over a few nights, just increased all of their speeds to these new speed tiers,” LeBlanc said in an interview. “There’s no change to modems, there’s no requirement to get an install. It’s something that we can do with the turn of the dial, so to speak.”

Demand for Internet bandwidth has exploded over the last five years, he said, with social media and streaming services such as Netflix increasing in popularity.

“In Atlantic Canada, with these types of speeds, we have speeds that aren’t available in cities throughout the world, but because we built a 100 per cent fibre-to-the-home network, we’re able to do speeds, whether it’s Halifax, or Digby or Sydney, that people in Chicago or Los Angeles can’t get.”